Thanks to Jonathan Dodd for this week’s submission. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
Writing blogs is a strange thing. Moments and scenes from my past are popping up in my memory.
I’m not sure whether they spark off thoughts or it’s the thoughts that ring the memory’s bells. Anyway, here I go again.
I remember vividly a night many years ago. I can’t remember when it was, but I was in my parents’ house, watching a film on TV. My mother was knitting and my father and I were glued to the set.
The film was ‘Some Like It Hot’, and Marilyn Monroe was wearing a backless dress of net and sequins and singing ‘I Want to Be Loved By You’ in that way she had of capturing your total attention while appearing to be completely innocent.
I remember my mother looking up and saying – ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. She’s not even pretty!’
Bless her
Bless her. I remember my father and me turning as one and looking at her as if she was an alien. At that moment the very last thing we were thinking about was whether Marilyn Monroe was ‘pretty’ or not.
I always thought it showed how innocent my mother was in some ways, but of course it was much more complicated. Now I wonder how aware she was of what we were both thinking and what she thought about that.
I also know now that MM cultivated that innocent come-on, as so cleverly reproduced by Michelle Williams in the recent excellent film ‘My Week With Marilyn’. I also think about us men, quite innocently and naturally responding to MM on screen, in ways that many would think were very uninnocent indeed.
Death Line
Then I remembered another scene. Everyone knows that children can be innocent, but definitely not all the time, and a moment comes when they change. There’s no being on the planet as cynical as a thirteen-year-old. I know. That was me.
I remember going to a film, a late-night showing of a film called ‘Death Line’ in Brighton, and cynically dismantling it as every scene unfolded, until my companions told me to shut up because I was spoiling their enjoyment.
They were quite right, of course. I was being worldly-wise and too clever by half and as a result I had lost the simple art of innocently experiencing things.
I resolved to unlearn that, and taught myself to give film-makers and authors the chance to impress me before I banged the gong and condemned them. Suddenly I started to enjoy films and books again, and I allowed my innocence to return to as many areas of my life as I could.
Innocence regained
All it took was determination and a lot of hard work. But it was worth it.
Innocence once lost can be regained. It usually happens to new parents and new grandparents, and surviving some traumatic event can reawaken someone’s joie de vivre. There’s no need to be miserable and depressive. Life can be fun again. Give innocence a chance. You know it makes inner sense.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
Image: Marilyn by o0.Grace.0o under CC BY 2.0 and Cinema seats by Image: Looking Glass under CC BY 2.0
